For Approval: Microsoft Permissive License

[Matthew Flaschen]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Matthew Flaschen (matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu):
> 
>> I'm talking about what they use, not what they're supposed to use.  I
>> can give many examples of times OSI has been reluctant to approve an
>> OSD-compliant license.  For instance, they held off on SimPL because it
>> was (mistakenly) believed incompatible with GPLv2.
> 
> I imagine Board members regard it as perfectly appropriate to delay
> consideration of a licence where Board members wish to encourage the
> drafter to consider some change, or to ponder some practial problem or
> badly written wording.

This is what I suggest in this case.

> Let's face it:  Many new licences have been pretty dumb ideas in a variety of ways, and are likely to remain so
> (human perversity, and in particular the perversity of many licence 
> drafters, being what it is).

Agreed.

  Were I on the Board, I'd probably be in
> absolutely no hurry to vote on those, either -- and would regard that 
> fact as in no way contradictory of the process shown on
> http://www.opensource.org/approval .

Whether it's contradictory of the approval process, I can't say.  But
it's certain that many dumb license ideas are in fact OSD-compliant.

Matt Flaschen